As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,824,613, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, there are many situations where large number of analytical instruments are used to conduct large numbers of chemical, physical or biological tests on liquids. Examples of such laboratories are oil refineries, chemical plants, pharmaceutical manufacturing operations, forensic laboratories, medical laboratories, food manufacturing operations and the like.
Typically, a sample is taken at a location outside the laboratory delivered to a sample preparation station where an individual, machine or robot withdraws a suitably sized portion and places it in a clean specialized container known as a vial. Records are made to indicate when and where the sample was taken and suitable information is placed on the sample container so results can be appropriately correlated for study and analysis.
In a typical large analytical laboratory, sample vials are loaded in a tray and manually delivered from the sample preparation station to a bank of analytical instruments, of which gas chromatographs (GCs) or combinations of gas chromatographs, liquid chromatographs and mass spectrometers (MSs) are common. An individual loads the vials into the inlet tray or autoloader of the GCs or MSs and the analytical instruments more-or-less operate automatically to conduct the programmed tests on the samples in the vials, generate reports and transport the vials to an output tray of the instrument where the vials are ultimately collected and either discarded or temporarily stored.
Disclosures of some interest relative to this invention are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,733,026; 4,941,777; 4,886,401; 5,234,292; 5,337,920; 5,441,699; 5,623,415; 5,682,026; 5,805,454; 6,071,477; 6,128,549; 6,141,602; 6,659,693; 6,974,294, 7,407,627 and 7,824,613 and U.S. printed patent publications 2002/0198738, 2004/0100415 and 2006/0120835.